Legislators’ Careers Parallel, Even to the End

Two of the San Gabriel Valley’s political mainstays, Sally Tanner and Bill Lancaster, will retire from the Assembly at the end of this month, ending the sort of careers that term limits will soon make extinct.

Both started in politics as volunteers, landed jobs as political aides, ran for office themselves when they saw the chance and won reelection every two years from the 1970s through the ‘80s to the ‘90s. Tanner, a Democrat, will complete 14 years in Sacramento, and Lancaster, a Republican, will finish nearly 21.

Tanner, a trained artist and avid fisherman, will pursue those hobbies at her new home on the Northern California coast. Lancaster, who has lived in the same house in Covina since 1966, will remain there and keep working, although he is not ready to disclose what his new job will be.

The term-limit initiative passed by voters two years ago decreed that Assembly members can serve no more than three terms of two years each after 1990. Tanner and Lancaster could have run for reelection twice more, but they would have faced tough challenges this year, and their appetite for political combat was never great.

Their decisions to quit coincided, as did their beginnings in politics in Duarte. Lancaster, then a driver-salesman for Pepsi-Cola, won a seat on the Duarte City Council at the age of 27 in 1958 and captured a second term four years later. Tanner, then a young mother working as an advertising illustrator, walked precincts for him.

Both found enduring political heroes in the presidential elections in the 1950s (Dwight Eisenhower for him, Adlai Stevenson for her), and parlayed their participation in grass-roots politics into jobs.

Lancaster worked for the California Taxpayers’ Assn. for a year, managed the campaign that put former El Monte Mayor Charles Wiggins in Congress in 1966 and then ran Wiggins’ district office. Meanwhile, Tanner became an aide to El Monte Assemblyman Harvey Johnson.

Lancaster and Tanner worked in the same El Monte office building and represented their bosses at many of the same civic functions. To a remarkable degree over the years, Tanner said, “our lives have been parallel.”

Both have been pragmatic politicians. He has been a reliable conservative vote and she a liberal one, but their image has been that of moderates. Neither attracted much attention in office, but they earned respect for integrity and praise from constituents.

Lancaster won admiration for his efforts to preserve the authority of local government against inroads by the state. Pomona Mayor Donna Smith said Lancaster is “local government’s dream representative in Sacramento. Bill has been terrific. His staff has been wonderful.”

Tanner made her mark as chairwoman of the Assembly Committee on Environmental Safety and Toxic Materials. San Gabriel Valley environmental activist Wil Baca said Tanner took an early and sustained interest in the problem of ground water contamination in the area and helped defeat a plan for a huge trash incineration plant in Irwindale. “She was strong on environmental issues even in the days when they weren’t very sexy,” Baca said.

Tanner said she got her committee chairmanship by default because others were not yet interested in environmental problems. And although she lacked technical training, she developed expertise, worked tenaciously to find compromises satisfactory to business and environmental interests, and put her stamp on pioneering legislation regarding air pollution and toxic waste.

Both lawmakers are retiring in their early 60s in a year of personal setbacks. The home in Ferndale, near Eureka, that Tanner bought last year for her retirement was badly damaged by an earthquake in April. Lancaster’s loss was even greater. Treece, his wife of 41 years, died of cancer in May.

Lancaster said his wife’s fatal illness sealed his decision to retire.

“Treece and I talked about it before we knew how serious her illness was, and she was saying in effect (that) it was time to come home,” he said. “When we found out what the circumstances were, that settled it right there. . . . You’re always optimistic you can win that war (against cancer). I was going to retire to be here with her.”

Now, Lancaster said, he is planning to spend time with his children and grandchildren and will become involved in community activities. He is setting up the Bill Lancaster Community Foundation to support community projects, using money left over from his political campaigns. After he has paid all his political bills, Lancaster said, he will have more than $90,000 to put in the foundation.

Tanner plans to spend the first part of her retirement repairing her quake-damaged house.

She bought the house a year ago after going through Ferndale on her return home from a fishing trip to Oregon. “I saw it on the map and I thought I’d go over and take a look at it,” Tanner said. “I saw a charming and lovely place. I fell in love with it.”

Although she carried earthquake insurance on condominiums she owns in Sacramento and Baldwin Park, Tanner said she decided not to buy it for her Ferndale house. “This house was over 100 years old and nothing had ever happened to it,” she said.

Tanner was attending a festival in the Ferndale business district when the quake struck. Afterward, she found that her house had been knocked off its foundation. She surveyed the damage and left. “I didn’t stay for the aftershocks.”

Since then, the house has been put back on its foundation and major repairs have been made. Tanner said she loves the weather and the setting in Ferndale but will miss her friends in the San Gabriel Valley.

In Ferndale, she said: “I’ll be a stranger and it’s a small town. . . . That’s the one negative thing about it. But if I’m not happy, I’ll sell it.”

Tanner has no regrets about leaving the Capitol, which she said has become an increasingly partisan and contentious place.

“I really think I made the right choice because attitudes have changed,” Tanner said. “It isn’t as (collegial) a group. Now people disagree and become disagreeable. That’s not my style.”

Tanner was drawn to government by her enthusiasm for politics, but over the years, as she immersed herself in legislative work, she lost interest in political activities. She never could bring herself to make calls to raise campaign funds, she said, and even such routine chores as riding in community parades became burdensome. “It’s embarrassing for me to smile and wave,” she said. “The one nice thing is that people along the route shout out, ‘Hi, Sally.’ ”

San Gabriel Valley voters did not elect a woman to the Legislature until Tanner won her first term in 1978 and did not elect another until this year, when they elected three. There will be 22 women in the 80-member Assembly next term, more than three times the number when Tanner first arrived in Sacramento.

Tanner is an enthusiastic supporter of women candidates.

“I really believe that if we had more women in the (U.S.) Senate and a woman in the White House, we wouldn’t have as many wars,” she said. “Little girls walk down the street holding hands. Little boys walk down the street poking each other. It’s a natural kind of thing.”

Tanner added: “Women can be tough too. We’re kinder, gentler and maybe even tougher.”

Tanner has used her tough mind and gentle demeanor to produce significant legislative achievements.

She wrote the “lemon law” that requires auto makers to replace new cars that are hopelessly defective or give customers their money back. She helped create the state Superfund for toxic substance cleanup in 1981. She authored a landmark bill in 1983 to require the state to identify hazardous chemicals and pesticides, and won passage of legislation in 1986 that required counties to develop plans to manage hazardous waste.

Lancaster is less known for his legislation, much of it involving technical issues in insurance and other fields. He said the achievement that gives him the most satisfaction is restoration of the Capitol. He was one of six legislators on the committee that guided that project to completion.

On local issues, his most persistent work has been to push for extension of the Foothill Freeway from La Verne eastward. That project currently is one of the top priorities of state transportation officials.

Lancaster’s strongest convictions, stemming from his years on the Duarte City Council, involve home rule. State government has usurped too much power, in his view. “I really believe that California as a state has drifted away from the basic concept of doing things locally whenever possible,” he said.

Both lawmakers acknowledge that the Legislature has earned its poor reputation, even though they view their colleagues as hard-working, well-intentioned people.

“There are exceptions, of course, but I’m not going to tell you who I like and who I don’t like,” said Lancaster, still the cautious, nice-to-everyone politician even with retirement in sight.

Tanner, almost as circumspect, said: “There are a couple of people over the years I’ve had my doubts about. . . . I lose a bill that special interests have lobbied to death and I think: What are they doing? Why would they consider voting for that industry?”

Tanner said she takes pride in her own integrity. “I have been honest with myself. My office has been truly ethical. You damn well can be a politician and be straight.”

Tanner and Lancaster fear that the Legislature is going to become even less effective than it is now because of term limits. It took them years, they said, to acquire expertise in fields such as insurance and toxic waste. Legislators will be on their way out of office before they can acquire similar knowledge. Staff members and lobbyists will have extraordinary influence over poorly informed legislators, they predict.

“The power of the people will be lost,” Tanner said. “Representative government is threatened.”

Lancaster said he understands why term limits are popular and why people are frustrated with government. He was frustrated himself this year, Lancaster said.

“Set aside my personal circumstances, this probably was the worst year I ever spent in the state Legislature,” he said, citing the deadlock over the budget that left the state unable to pay its bills for two months.

“The primary role of government is to get the job done,” Lancaster said. “And we didn’t.”

Although they are giving up their elective offices, neither Tanner nor Lancaster is ready to get out of politics altogether.

With no election of her own on the Nov. 3 ballot, Tanner walked precincts for two friends, Assemblymen Bob Epple (D-Cerritos), who won reelection, and Jerry Eaves (D-Rialto), who won a seat on the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors.

Lancaster said he intends to stay active on political issues, speaking on the virtues of home rule whenever he gets a chance. But, he said, he finally realized how different things are going to be when he opened his sample ballot this year and for the first time in 20 years did not find his own name.